How an Open Democratic Convention Would Work

The Ezra Klein Show

New York Times Opinion

Society & Culture, Government, News

4.6 • 11K Ratings

🗓️ 2 July 2024

⏱️ 63 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

After President Biden’s rough performance at the first presidential debate, the question of an open convention has roared to the front of Democratic politics. But how would an open convention work? What would be its risks? What would be its rewards? In February, after I first made the case for an open Democratic convention, I interviewed Elaine Kamarck to better understand what an open convention would look like. She literally wrote the book on how we choose presidential candidates, “Primary Politics: Everything You Need to Know About How America Nominates Its Presidential Candidates.” But her background here isn’t just theory. She’s worked on four presidential campaigns and on 10 nominating conventions — for both Democrats and Republicans. She’s a member of the Democratic National Committee’s Rules Committee. And her explanation of the mechanics and dynamics of open conventions was, for me, extremely helpful. It’s even more relevant now than it was then. Book Recommendations: All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren The Making of the President 1960 by Theodore H. White Quiet Revolution by Byron E. Shafer Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs. This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Annie Galvin. Fact checking by Michelle Harris, with Kate Sinclair and Kristin Lin. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Rollin Hu. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. And special thanks to Sonia Herrero.

Transcript

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0:00.0	From New York Times opinion, this is the Ezra Klein Show. So a number of months ago, I made the argument that Joe Biden should step aside and
0:26.6	Democrats should pick their nominee at an open convention. That used to be how it was done.
0:31.3	Now we use primaries and conventions have become largely
0:35.1	public relations affairs. But if something happened to the nominee who had won
0:41.7	the primaries or if a party decided to go in a different direction,
0:45.4	the convention is still there.
0:47.9	So Joe Biden's rough performance at the first presidential debate has brought back the question of whether Democrats
0:54.0	should go another way and choose a candidate at their convention. There's no
0:59.2	doubt this is risky, there's no doubt they don't really have muscle memory on this anymore, but there's also no doubt that going forward with Joe Biden at this point is an incredibly risky strategy to.
1:09.0	So how does a convention actually work? What would happen if Democrats did try this?
1:14.6	Back in February when I was making this argument the first time,
1:17.1	I had Elaine K-mark on the show to talk about exactly that.
1:20.8	K-mark is really the leading expert here. She's worked on four presidential
1:24.6	campaigns on ten nominating conventions both for Democrats and Republicans. She's
1:29.0	been on the DNC Rules Committee for many years. She's the author of the book on this, Primary Politics, and she's a
1:34.8	senior fellow at Brookings. I found the conversation incredibly helpful then, and as people
1:40.9	think about this now, or even if you're just a political junkie
1:43.6	who wants to think a little bit about
1:45.1	how this happened differently in American history,
1:47.6	I think it's even more relevant today.
1:50.3	As always, my email as your client show at nytimes.com.
1:54.0	Elaine Kmark, welcome to the show.
	...

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